


Lurk

by Blacknwhitewings



Category: LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, No Porn, Tentacles, huge lovecraftian inspiration, send help, the violin is a character in itself at that point, tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:15:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25952797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacknwhitewings/pseuds/Blacknwhitewings
Summary: They lurk around, the shadows. Always. And in the air, the violin sings its sad melody as the world ceases to make sense and the past burdens heavy souls. The Dark spills its secrets in the ear of those who listen carefully... And Diego listened for ten long years.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	1. The Shadows Behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ookomix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ookomix/gifts), [Thiamma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thiamma/gifts).



> Thank you, @Ookomix, for the prompt and I hope it answers what you had in mind! And I'm so sorry you had to read that, @Thiamma! For those who discover this short fic, I hope you enjoy it. I'll put trigger warnings in notes such as this one in the chapters that need it for you not to be spoiled. In the meantime, enjoy my twisted imagination fed with too many Lovecraftian stories (this one was inspired by At the Mountains of Madness and the game Edge of Nowhere)

“These were days when my heart was volcanic  
As the scoriac rivers that roll—  
As the lavas that restlessly roll  
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek  
In the ultimate climes of the pole—  
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek  
In the realms of the boreal pole.”

Diego stared at the engraving splayed across the pages of the old, dusty book between his hands. He could see them squirm on the paper, slither, coil, twist and recoil, those damn, nightmarish limbs that took his brother from him. That took everything and scattered the last illusions left of a family. The others had discarded the idea, deemed him mad, delusional, they’d talked about denial and daydreams but he knew! Oh, he knew and he would have to prove them wrong, to prove them that Ben wasn’t lost. This quest for an answer about his brother’s fate had begun almost ten years ago, now, but he couldn’t back away. Not anymore. He’d learnt too much, faced too much of the world to give up. Ben was somewhere, lost, taken, a prisoner of his own forces, so close and out of reach and Diego could save him he knew he could and he would d— … Harshly, Diego closed the book. He’d lost precious minutes rambling in his own looping thoughts but the boat was about to depart and he could not afford to miss it.  
Softly rocked by the waves, the ship was a beauty. Long ago, the HMS Arcadia had been a magnificent beast scourging the seas for the greatness of an Empire. But now, her rusty frame made her a ghost ship at the service of some private research centers. It didn’t matter, they were to sail from Johannesburg to the Kerguelen Islands, for whatever research they were supposed to do, and Diego needed to be around there too. He climbed aboard without as much as a glance back, his whole attention already focused on the ocean spreading as far as the eye could see. He could feel it under his skin, running through his veins; the nearing end. Dropping his bag on the ground, Diego comfortably sat against the railing and closed his eyes. All around him buzzed the eager energies of upcoming departure, the hurried footsteps of the researchers and quiet hums of their paraphernalia. A bird, atop one of the masts, sang with the sea. For the first time in a long, long time, Diego felt at peace. He grabbed in his bag the book that had led him there and mechanically opened it to the engraving. They now laid very still, a subtle shiver crossing their viscous, smooth skin, as if they were waiting, as impatient as he was, to reach their destination. His fingers hovered above the tentacles, but he didn’t need to touch them to know the grain of the pages, its feeling against his skin, the stillness of the paper yet sheltering the writhing unnamed. With a tired sigh, Diego closed the book and put it again deep in his bag. He feared that letting it open for too long would alert the shadows behind… They were relentless in their pursuit, relentless in their desire to catch up, catch him, bury him with them in their etherworld. Would it be fair? He’d been the one unleashing them from their prison, the tin tomb that had kept them away from aeons, but he couldn’t stop now. Not so close to the truth.  
“So, what’re you lookin’ for in the deserted wasteland that are the french Kerguelen?”  
Diego jumped, torn from his thoughts by a scruffy voice he hadn’t heard come closer.  
“Water.” he sombrely answered.  
The man standing in front of him, an old sailor with eyes like steel splinters and a sliver beard, chuckled and crossed his arms. “Not a poacher, are ya? You don’t look the type, though. You look like a man chasing ghosts.”  
The cryptic sentence echoed against the walls of Diego’s head. It was true, he was chasing ghosts, hope, dreams. Terrible truths compared to comfortable lies. But he did not nod nor deny. What for? The old sailor shook his head slowly. “A lot of odd stories about those waters. Passing from generations to generations, about things below I wouldn’t want to cross paths with. Those guys, the scientists, they don’t believe it. But some things are better left alone, boy. For everybody’s sake.”  
Again, Diego chose silence. There was something terribly unnerving about that strange man, an uncanniness in his stance, his knowing look. But the sailor shrugged and chuckled again. “It’ll be over soon, then. K’legh Yod’oth above and below. Godspeed, boy. Godspeed.” The alien sentence struck, painfully familiar, but Diego never had the opportunity to ask for its meaning. As awestruck, he looked at the man walking away, it would be the last time he ever saw the sailor. 

——

A flash of light, a blood curdling scream, and then nothing. The void of a room that should not have been empty. For the funeral, Vanya played the violin, Mendhelsson she’d said but he had to take her word for it; Diego didn’t know much about music. To reflect the somber mood, the skies were pouring tears on them, on the casket that echoed back, a reminder that they had nothing to bury. Diego found it strange, that nobody said anything about that. Burials are for dead people, not missing ones. For the departed and not vanished. But his puzzlement had no answer, and so he stood there, dazed, as his siblings cried their Number Six. And as the casket sunk in its tomb of white marble, the world ceased to make sense. Every Hargreeves ended in this mausoleum, that night, and the only thing left was the violin which never stopped playing. Sometimes, even ten years later, Diego could still hear it somewhere amongst the winds. He left the Academy soon after, he couldn’t bear seeing the others pretending Ben was dead and not alone, somewhere. Diego travelled far looking for answers, all around the world, and he met with the most uncanny people, illuminated, mad even, but little by little he gained certainty and a way to the right path. He wasn’t smart, he knew that very well. He didn’t have Luther’s strategic genius, Allison’s deep understanding of human nature or Five’s insolent cleverness… But what he had was resolve, an obstinacy such that he was able to divert the immovable, and this sheer stubbornness was all that was left for him, now. The only thing fuelling his hope to find Ben alive, pushing him farther and farther into the strangest places guided by dreams and whispers, pushing him away from the shadows behind. Nothing else was left but that burning desire to see the end of the nightmare. And on the ship now, the rest of the journey took the shape of a feverish dream. Boiling seas and screaming skies, And Ben begged and begged to be found, his shrilling plea a broken recorder. They were so close to the end Diego felt he could almost touch it, that air of violin singing in the air… The storm lasted the week needed to reach the french antarctic archipel. Eventually, the coasts of the Western Isle pierced the horizon, the glimmer of the cliffs illuminating the rolling fog that swallowed the seas below. The ship came to a halt near the cliffs and the research team began to prepare their trip to some beach nested inside stark rock formations. Diego didn’t help, he didn’t care for their fascination for some penguins and with the amount of cash he’d given to the captain of the Arcadia, he had no need to lift a finger. He climbed aboard the first boat, his bag slung on his shoulder, and without a word, ignored the other passengers, focusing on the island in front of him. Kerguelen was a desert, a sad wasteland of dry grass and crisp winds, on which only sea birds had settled for decades and seals sometimes landed on to try and catch some imprudent prey. The land itself was of little importance for Diego. Once on shore, he left the group without so much of a goodbye and began to climb the slope up a grassy hill from which he would have a better viewpoint. Once atop, he sat on the ground and fetched his book. This time, the wretched things seemed upset, agitated, writhing around the page like a mass of disgusting tendrils, cursing around in the book but powerless to stop him. He was too close to the end for that. So he closed the book on their dark whispers and left the bag on the grassy hill as he stood up and walked toward the sea again. It was there, he could feel it. The horror that had ruined his brother’s life. Right there, beneath the water… dormant and undisturbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the poem extract is from Poe's "To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad"
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the first chapter!


	2. The Shadows Below

The water was icy cold, clawing against his skin, but he didn’t care. As he walked deeper and deeper, he stopped breathing altogether and let the depths swallow him whole. Around him silently swam the seals and the sharks, but they left him unbothered as he began to swim further away from the coast. Somewhere in the darkness, at the threshold of insustainable pressure, he would find what he had sought for ten long years… the other side of the terrible portal Ben’s body was the key of. Even there, the violin had followed him, cutting through the quiet currents. He could feel fear creep inside of him, murmuring those words again, K’legh Yod’oth, K’legh Yod’oth, K’legh Yod’oth… the city above and below, of which the name was shyly written in only the insane books of forbidden knowledge. K’legh Yod’oth, K’legh Yod’oth, whispered again and again to the rhythm of that cursed melody his sister had played to forget Ben. But he hadn’t forgotten. He couldn’t. He couldn’t fail again to save him. Soon the seal and the sharks stopped following, driven away, but he kept going deeper and deeper in the unknown darkness and he could feel around new things swimming by. Older things. Curious, hovering around as to see what he would do next in this blind world he didn’t belong to. Turning back had never been an option. 

Piping songs arose, covering Mendelssohn with their alien notes, but still he couldn’t see, only feel them brushing against him, chanting around him as if they led him to what he was seeking. And he let them. His head hurt, his eyes burned of the black world and he wondered if he would ever be able to see again, or if he was now part of that world. He’d swam for aeons now, any idea of time dissolving to leave in the surroundings only the eldritch chants and the subtle touches of the horrors around. But as hope thinned and thinned and thinned, Diego suddenly saw light. Dim and blinding. A greenish hue floating somewhere around and chasing the creatures back to the pitch black abysses below. K’legh Yod’oth. As he approached the massive staircase of dark stone, the water receded around, leaving him breathing the foul air of decay that infested the place. Everything was huge, a gigantic ruin of ungraspable, grotesque beauty. K’legh Yod’oth. The piping hadn’t left with the things, but now echoed against the carved pillars in a familiar, mocking melody. Beneath the song, Ben was still screaming. Atop the stairway, a greenish glowing gate towered, slightly ajar, taunting Diego to go yet further. And so he went yet further, pushed by something greater, darker, that never let him stop, catch his breath, mend his mind. 

Behind the gate, a grotesque and fantasmagoric garden bathed in a parody of sunlight that lacked warmth. The vegetation was thick, exotic, twisted, flowers displaying colours out of space and misshapen fruits exuding foul and pungent smells. Above, no trace of ceiling but an endless sky that was both exactly as the sky should be and ridiculously out of place. Diego slowly walked amongst the dense vegetation, titanic trees older than man itself, as a soft breeze carrying dizzying scents warmed his bones chilled by the water. He could sense it here. The thing. The Unnamed. Somewhere in that senseless place. No birds, no insects, not a living, breathing soul around, except for those plants that seemed to watch his every move. Dwarfed by the disproportionate architecture, Diego kept walking deeper and deeper in the belly of the beast, still pushed and dragged, muted brains and autonomous limbs. And as he went deeper, and deeper, and deeper, the trees and bushes and flowers and grass left place to stones and walls and windows and streets and the sun crept out of view as a gigantic arched ceiling covered the absurd skies. 

A city. A city whose buildings confused him, forms and shapes that made no sense and still towered around. On the walls, unknown writings swirled and twirled around, telling untold stories of forgotten times. The place was a shell, void of hope and void of life; void of purpose altogether. Not cold nor warm. It was a sad place… A sad space. And as he realised that, Diego felt his legs buckle under him and he fell on his knees. “How do you get so empty?” he whispered so softly he himself barely heard it. “Who takes it out of you?” It was a silly quote from a sad book he hadn’t even liked, but oddly enough, nothing but this silly quote from this sad book came to his mind. K’legh Yod’oth was nothing but a soulless heap of rocks, rocked by the song of violin muffling Ben’s screams as they buried him alive one handful of dirt at a time. And in front of Diego’s eyes, the book opened on the engraving and now the withering mass was angrily squirming, fighting to get out and into the world. They hadn’t had enough with Ben and wouldn’t have enough with the whole world. Splayed on the ground, the book crawled and dragged itself toward him and dread washed over him like cold slime. Diego forced himself on his feet, he couldn’t run, hadn’t enough strength left in his bones, but he could keep going. Walk until the end of the road and until Ben stopped screaming. That he could do. That he needed to do, that was all he was. The book was gone, only the city remained, still a ghost nurturing nightmares in its bosom.

The tortuous streets seemingly devoid of organisation unraveled step after step, sometimes opening to huge plazas, wells, ridiculous spaces, before closing around again. Every step forward the violin would soften to let more and more of the screams instead. Every step forward became more and more difficult and yet the city continued to unroll around as if it was the one moving. Piles and piles of grotesque shapes and hideous stones of a black so dark it shone the path to follow. And Diego asked himself where it’d go, if eventually he would reach the center of the earth or die before that. But he was not thirsty, nor hungry, never tired enough just to collapse despite no more concept of time. His mind wandered on its own along the streets of grotesque shapes and hideous stones of K’legh Yod’oth, in Poe’s Realm of Boreal Poles. His mind wondered on its own about the years and years looking for its own demise, foolish dreams and insane hopes to accomplish… what? In the end there laid nothing. A teddy bear sitting on one of the odd oblong windows. Ben’s. Worn out and battered by night hugs and games of tag, it stood there strangely, like a mockery of life in the empty. It still had the freshly stitched up knife wound Diego had inflicted upon it during practice. It had been an accident, a young child’s mistake and he still so vividly remembered the horror he had felt as the stuffing poured out and out of the paw like light, snowy blood. He had cried more than Ben on that day. Diego closed the distance between the bear and him, and reached out to grab it. But his hand instead met a disgusting, warm, squishy texture that filled him with dread while the bear melted and turned into a pile of entrails pouring out a gutted body. And he looked with horror as his blood-covered hand held a sharp, glistening knife. “Why are you doing this to me?!?” he yelled at the emptiness, throwing the weapon away. “Stop it!! Just give him back to me!!”

_ Do you deserve him? _ The voice made the city shiver in its black stone tomb. Deep, rumbling, moduled thunder that pierced the air with thousands of needles.  _ Do you deserve anything? Look at it. Look at him. _

But he refused to look, to lower his gaze once again on the heap of mingled flesh that laid sprawled on the floor and of which blood was covering his arms and face. Diego turned his back on it and kept going, his throat burning, and eyes burning, and guts wrenching. He could not look at it and so he kept going, losing himself in the titanic shambles of hopes and dreams as the thundering voice laughed and laughed. He climbed down the massive spiraling staircase that kept on driving him deeper and deeper, in a darker and darker place.


	3. The Shadows Within

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR TW : mention of suicide. Nothing explicit.

The living room felt cold despite the raging flames dancing in the fireplace, and the record player hummed a soft piece Diego knew but couldn’t name. The air was thick, everything dimmed and muffled, like a dream of tar and feathers. Shadows came and went, engrossed in their life of make-believe, blind and deaf to his presence in a place he should have been able to call home. But he couldn’t. The words just stuck to his throat, rather be unspoken than lying. He wanted to call his mom, to yell until someone noticed him but the thick dream of tar and feathers had clung to his lungs and swallowed his voice. So Diego stood there, helpless, waiting for the end of the nightmare for a long, long time.

“What do you think you are doing here, Number Two?” Reginald’s voice, sharp and cold, cut right through time and silence, made the dream shiver. He was seated in his armchair by the fireplace. A customary scene that somehow felt wrong, out of place. “Have you not yet realised it is ridiculous, what you are attempting to do?”

Diego wanted to talk back, to retort something acid and acerb, but the rebellious words failed him again. He lowered his gaze, begging in his mind that the dream would pass. 

But it was still there and now Reginald stood up and walked around, soundless pacing so only his voice could still fill the empty. “Did you really imagine that you could save anyone, boy? That you could be a hero?” Yes. “You failed Number Five. You failed Number Six.” Five and Ben were looking straight at him from the corner of the room. One still a child and the other covered in guts and blood. He was losing his mind. “You are nothing of what you imagine to be. Only a pile of failures after failures after disappointments. And yet here you are, still desperately grasping thin threads of hope that snap one after the other.”

It was a lie. Ben was not dead and Diego knew that. Five wasn’t either. But the shadows said otherwise, and they hovered closer and closer. Sweet, soft, empty Vanya. Broken Klaus that screamed in his sleep night after night. Poor, poor Allison that knew nothing except deception and illusions. Luther, the best of them and damaged beyond repair… The shadows around that had finally caught up with his desperate flight. He had failed them all. The hero that could not save his own, his loved ones, his family. What a jest. And under the couch the unnamed writhed and slid and curled and coiled. They were everywhere, those hideous things, climbing around his siblings to take them away from him. Frozen in place, he was yet powerless to do anything as they screamed and screamed, crushed and consumed by the tentacles of the Unnamed. And he begged and begged for it to give them back to him, to spare them but it had no care for his broken plea and soon the living room was nothing but a nest of squirming flesh. But when nothing remained to be consumed, they recoiled and left instead a place of black stone shining their darkness, a hall empty of life except for that air of violin that never left after ten years. 

“You can’t break me like that!” Diego screamed, throat torn. “I’m stronger than that!” But even his lies found no echo in the dark. 

Trembling, Diego forced himself to move, one step at a time. He was so close, the cries had almost entirely replaced the music. The walls around him were tellers of terribles stories, losses and defeats, vivid illustrations around which curved the terrible language of this madness. And he tried so hard not to see it, not to read it, but it did not let him and every word burned white hot in his mind. Diego just wanted this to end, the nightmare to stop.

At the end of the hallway, a door stood closed, its lock oddly shaped, like a vine or a rope curling on itself, and he brushed the strange pattern from the tip of his fingers, felt the smoothness of the polished marble against his skin and its cold stabbed his heart. “I’m so sorry,” he choked softly.

“You could try and make it up to me, you know?”

Diego jumped and turned around, eyes growing wide with bewilderment. 

Ben was there, in front of him, whole and well. He smiled and came to the door, near Diego. “I’ll open it for you, you’ll find what you need inside. And I’ll wait for you.”

“But… what do you want me to do?”

“You really don’t know? You’ll see.” And Ben pushed the door open, its white marble grinding in a terrible cry and he was gone but the path laid ahead, going deeper and deeper in the lair of the Unnamed. And Diego had no choice but to take it, pushed and driven by the shadows, no choice at all indeed.

And in its terrible throne sat the Unnamed, writhing and coiling and recoiling, curling on and in itself, a prison of screeching horrors and it looked at Diego through a thousand shivering, unblinking eyes. Judged him.  _ And so you came _ . And so he did, the haze of his thoughts clawing around to breathe again remained unheard.  _ Are you asking for forgiveness? _ the thing asked, its voice echoing around and within, quieting the violin for good. 

“Yes.”

So the Unnamed rose from its throne of white marble and slithered closer and closer, each step shedding its tentacles and thousands eyes on the ground, each step unveiling more and more of the truth and Diego could do nothing but stare with awe.  _ Stay. Stay here, with me. Never leave, if you wish to save me. That is what I am asking.  _ And Ben stood there, covered in guts and blood, his soft smile so terribly empty. It couldn’t be… Had he lost it? Truly shattered his mind along the road? All around them, they crawled, listening, waiting, his ghosts. His shadows lurking, always stalking. And the pain was burning cold as the steel cut through skin and veins and muscles but he could not yell or scream, because he had succeeded. He had found Ben and he would stay with him, forever, as it had been his dreams for so, so long… the answer to quiet the shadows within. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's the end! Thank you for having followed my troubled troubled imagination til the end, and I hope you liked it!


End file.
